Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @08:13PM
from the food-is-tasty-in-proportion-to-how-much-it's-trying-to-kill-you dept.

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Researchers with the European Food Safety Authority discovered variants of the Cauliflower mosaic virus 35S in the most widely harvested varieties of genetically-modified crops, including Monsanto's RoundupReady Soy and Maze. According to the researchers, Podevin and du Jardin, the particular 'Gene VI' is responsible for a number of possible consequences that could affect human health, including inhibition of RNA silencing and production of proteins with known toxicity. The EFSA is endorsing 'retrospective risk assessment' of CaMV promoter and its Gene VI sequences — in an attempt to give it a clean bill of health. It is unknown if the presence of the hidden viral genes were the result of laboratory contamination or a possible recombinant product of the resultant organism. There are serious implications for the production of GMO for foodstuffs, given either possibility."

...Will also screw those eating their products. Please resist the temptation to treat this so light-heartedly as just another case of hubris. These things affect not just one or two lives, but entire communities and even a couple of generations.

...Will also screw those eating their products. Please resist the temptation to treat this so light-heartedly as just another case of hubris. These things affect not just one or two lives, but entire communities and even a couple of generations.

Oh I wouldn't worry about the light-heated treatment of hubris. I'm sure Monsanto will pull of bunch of political strings, make some key campaign donations, and this whole thing will be forgotten. Maybe you forgot how things work here in the USA....

By placing this virus into Monsanto's Family-Friendly (TM) products, we ensure that a robust resistance to viruses is present not only in our corn, but in the very bodies of the children you love -- and Monsanto love -- so dearly. We've shown that this genetic profile is safe in the lab, safe in the field, and safe in the human body.

Multiple variants of the Cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter (P35S) are used to drive the expression of transgenes in genetically modified plants, for both research purposes and commercial applications.

So, right away we learn that it wasn't a "hidden viral gene". Its known and expected that P35S would be present.

A bioinformatic analysis was performed to assess the safety for human and animal health of putative translation products of gene VI overlapping P35S. No relevant similarity was identified between the putative peptides and known allergens and toxins, using different databases.

So again, nothing that might be been produced (but in fact have not been seen - hence "putative") by this gene's presence was found.

It is only supposed to be present in the lab, the actual crop you grown isn't supposed to have it. They use it during development only.

So again, nothing that might be been produced (but in fact have not been seen - hence "putative") by this gene's presence was found.

... in some databases. It is not certified for human consumption, and they are not scrambling to get that certification. So what TFA is saying is that on paper it looks okay but needs proper testing to determine if that is in fact the case.

Monsanto screwed up big time. They put something in our food that isn't known to be safe and that wasn't supposed to be there. The proper thing would be to destroy all affected crops and produce, but that would be expensive and Monsanto would have to pay vast compensation so instead they are just hoping that it turns out to be safe, or if not that they can bribe the relevant people.

... and millions of people have died and become gravely ill because of it. You're not going to tell me that because lots of people ingested harmful chemicals and developed cancer and terrible, terrible conditions because of it, the human race as a whole should keep on ingesting (patent-able!) feedstock from a company that's so interwoven with the government that it's earned a basic degree of effective immunity for its actions.

I've had one friend die from lung complications and another deal with lifelong diabetes and a skin condition due to exposure to chemicals Monsanto and Dow were contracted to develop. I do not trust this company with turning my food into closed-source fodder made to sell RoundUp. If there were lean, open biohacking firms that were able to operate, I would support proper testing of their GMOs and I would trust the community much more than I'd trust such a vile group as Monsanto, but the fact is that the patents and legal restrictions bought off by Monsanto make that impossible.

Actually, anything that screws Monsanto will greatly benefit the communities eating their products taking any view longer than about a week and a half. If there is any corp that can be rightly described as pure evil far beyond what is necessary to just make a profit, it's that one.

allowing monsanto to exist has *already* screwed us. Getting rid of them will simply get us past the hump of all the problems and shit they brought about in the first place. If you think we're living because of monsanto crops, you're mistaken. sustainable solutions (and life as we know it) has existed for thousands and thousands of years without them.

Quite, though I'm not convinced by the first link's suggestion that this could be a human health issue. As a scientist I've got to say it's not a great article, there's a rather obvious attempt to shoe horn a health scare into the analysis, to say nothing of smearing a regulatory body. (The latter in spite of a full public disclosure.)

As for the substance of the science. Yes, gene VI is toxic to plants but it's toxic when expressed inside a cell, so while it may be a danger to an infected plant it's got serious hurdles to leap before it gets expressed in a mammalian cell. I'd also note that while ribosomes are highly conserved, plant and mammalian ribosomes are not identical, so even if the protein was expressed in a human cell it's by no means certain to be functional. Moreover, it appears this isn't even the full length Gene VI, so it would by no means be functional even in plants.

At most there's a risk to the GM crop in the form of a reduced viral resistance, that's a threat to Monsanto's bottom line more than anything else.

On the whole I'm not impressed with the editorial commentary by Latham and Wilson, there's more than a whiff of axe grinding and self promotion. "Independent science news is clearly a misnomer". I hope they've written this letter to the journal in question, rather than jeering from the sidelines.

Quite, though I'm not convinced by the first link's suggestion that this could be a human health issue. As a scientist I've got to say it's not a great article, there's a rather obvious attempt to shoe horn a health scare into the analysis, to say nothing of smearing a regulatory body. (The latter in spite of a full public disclosure.)

Though the issues are not always the same, European scientists are susceptible to the same pressures as those in the U.S.—pressures brought to bear by political and economic interests. In this case the authors of the original article—Podevin and du Jardin—are, respectively, Italian and Belgian; both are employees of publicly funded institutions.
As for the source of the first cited article—Independent Science News—it must be said that though they may be "independent" in some

As I said, there is substantial prejudice in the European Union against all genetically modified crops.

I wish the same could be said for America, but alas, the huge Agro-Business lobby and money squashes anything even close to dissent. Hell, states now have laws that make it a felony, I believe, if you merely talk about about the food industry in print, radio or tv. Look how Oprah was attacked by the beef industry.

...but it shows that the entire attitude to food consumption and agricultural regulation in

To give a little bit of a simplified background, there are three critical elements in gene expression:PROMOTERTRANSCRIPTION FACTORSGENEPROTEIN

The PROMOTER is a genetic sequence that comes UPSTREAM of a GENE which is recognized by TRANSCRIPTION FACTORS

TRANSCRIPTION FACTORS bind to PROMOTER sequences and start the transcription of the GENE found downstream of the PROMOTER into mRNA

The mRNA of the GENE is then transported out of the nucleus to ribosomes to be translated into functional PROTEIN products

What the authors of this paper believed was that the sequence of the CaMV 35s promoter is similar to a viral protein used by many RNA viruses to protect their RNA from degradation (P6) so *IF* the CaMV promoter sequence itself is translated instead of the downstream gene (this is assumed to be possible, has not been observed) they hypothesized that it *MAY* have some functionality of the P6 protein. The odds of the CaMV promoter itself being translated into a protein are so remote that the possibility that it makes the (infinitesimal) odds that such a protein product would be functional seem astronomical be comparison. Furthermore, the authors never actually showed that the CaMV promoter is ever translated nor whether its translated product is functional, they merely compared the potential structure and sequence of the translated product to databases of known allergens and toxins and found.... nothing.

They also incorrectly state that plant viruses commonly infect animals, which is not true. Plant viruses do frequently use insects as their vectors, but it's farm more common that any given bacteria will infect both a plant and animal alike than it is a virus. The insects who carry the viruses are generally not affected. Similarly, a human who ingests a cauliflower infected with the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus is probably not going to notice the difference.

I wish this 'Scientist don't test GMO' nonsense would stop. Seriously, you look like an idiot.

Do you know what isn't tested? non GMO food; even though there is bacteria in the soil which does gene swapping between animals and plants. OMG it all going to END!!!

Did you actually read the link you posted? It clearly indicates that testing was done by Slovenia. I'm not necessarily saying that it IS the end of the world; but I am saying the government organizations in my country that are charged with ensuring food safety have not done any tests - so we don't really know if it's safe or not. At best it is suspicious that Monsanto has not been forthcoming and pushed the government to perform such testing and publish the results. If they had nothing to hide, it would

1. It's a part of a gene. It was cloned because of the promoter sequence that drives the expression of the transgene. (Viral promoters are very convinient - small but powerfull). Along with the promoter the transgenes carry a portion of a viral gene. Not sure why. Most likely because regulatory elements necessary for the promotor to work are embeded in the coding part.

2. It is on purpose. They need it to drive the expression of the gene that they put into the plants.

3. They didn't have to. They and everybody else new about it all along. I don't realy understand why it had to be "detected". It was there by design that is published in many research papers.

That's so true! It's just like the Cane Toad in Australia. It has been very effective at controlling pest insects on sugar cane fields ever since it was introduced in 1935, but the nay sayers are still convinced that the toads are an invasive species that are leading to severe breakdowns in Australian ecology. The nay sayers add to the hype by claiming that the cane toads are a nuissance to areas of human habitation, or even suggesting that there are risk of children or pets being poisoned from contact with toads.

They complain about the imagined threat posed by innocent little toads, but will they admit that they would be willing to go back 80 years and raise cane without the toads? Who could possibly imagine such a world so primitive as to even attempt to raise cane without cane toads? It is totally preposterous! If they weren't growing cane, what else could they have possibly grown in Queensland?

And a warning to those of us who support GMO with our hearts, souls, and wallets: They naysayers actually succeeded in getting the Australian government to ban importation of cane toads just after the initial release until a study could be completed to show that they were harmless. Fortunately for the industry, and the economy of Queensland, the ban was lifted in 1936. The danger posed by fearmongers who do not understand modern science and technology should not be under estimated. Just think - if the naysayers had their way, maybe there wouldn't even be ANY cane toads in Queensland today.

When you insert a new gene (such as an herbicide resistance gene in Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops) into a plant, you also need to insert a piece of DNA called a promoter that tells the plant to turn the gene on. The scientists who created the GMOs chose to insert the promoter from the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), as it is particularly good at this task and is very well studied. This promoter also happens to include part, but not the entirety, of gene VI from the virus.

* 2. Was it put there by accident or by purpose?
* 2(a). If by accident, how, when, what happened?
* 2(b). If by purpose, why, and by whom?

As stated above, the fragment of gene VI was placed into the GMOs on purpose. Because fragments of genes are generally inactive, the presence of the gene fragment is not expected to be problematic and showed no evidence of causing problems during the testing of the GMOs. Furthermore, because cauliflower mosaic virus is a naturally occurring virus, the full gene VI can be found in many non-GMO crops (for example, see this 2004 study [ica.csic.es]).

3. How come the American scientists never detected this viral gene?
* 3(a). Was it because of incompetence, or was it because the American scientists were not allowed to publish their finding, if they had found it before the Europeans?

These findings were not published before because we already knew that many GMOs contain a fragment of CaMV gene VI. In fact, in the Podevin and du Jardin study, the authors "found" the gene VI fragments by simply querying a database. A more substantial finding would have been if they found evidence that the gene VI fragments are actually made into functional protein (a prerequisite for the gene VI fragment to cause any deleterious effects), but this study did not investigate this issue. Rather, the study simply looked at what proteins might be produced in the worst case scenario and concluded that any possible proteins made from the gene VI fragments are unlikely to be human allergens or toxins. The authors speculate these possible proteins could be harmful to the plant itself, but because many of these GMOs are very productive plants that produce high yields in commercial settings, this possibility seems unlikely.

When you insert a new gene (such as an herbicide resistance gene in Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops) into a plant, you also need to insert a piece of DNA called a promoter that tells the plant to turn the gene on. The scientists who created the GMOs chose to insert the promoter from the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), as it is particularly good at this task and is very well studied. This promoter also happens to include part, but not the entirety, of gene VI from the virus

And from this observation--that part of a gene was left intact in order to act as a promoter to express a desired gene--TFA jumps to the conclusion that this gene could interfere with RNA silencing/human health/OMG the world is going to end. Assuming that the promoter is somehow translated into a gene product, which would be an aberration unto itself, you have to jump to the conclusion that 1) the partial gene would produce functional gene products, 2) in sufficient quantities to affect a human and 3) that

Not a virologist, but your response doesn't sound kosher. I don't see anywhere in your references, or any scientific citation linked by anyone at this site, anything at all to suggest that Gene VI insertion was at all Intentional.
I somehow doubt that it is...but, of course, that would make transgenic technology far less precise than biotechnologist would love people to believe--
which it is not.

Anyone making an analogy that we have been ingesting CaMV with veggies all along, so it must be safe--is drinking Cool Aid, We certainly weren't ingesting Gene VI in a transgenic crop carrying antibiotic resistance markers, EPSPS's, Bt, and random superfluous other pieces of DNA

Gene VI isn't just a simple protein; it has multiple functions. Since Gene VI alters RNA silencing and transactivates (http://www.pnas.org/content/86/23/9203.full.pdf) the products of each individual transgenic crop are unpredictable and unknown--could be mutant proteins, toxins, allergens or be harmless. No one knows. And anyone who tells you that they can rule out a food allergy by doing a bioinformatics search for protein homology, has never once worked with a food allergy patient, because the inconvenient truth is that the gold standard of food allergy diagnosis is a placebo controlled blinded food trial... in real life. There are no in vitro tests or homology tests that are precise enough to predict food allergy..... which is why each transgenic crop needs to be uniquely labeled with some sort of a code enabling tracing it to its specific genetic modification.

Not a virologist, but your response doesn't sound kosher. I don't see anywhere in your references, or any scientific citation linked by anyone at this site, anything at all to suggest that Gene VI insertion was at all Intentional.

The point is that the 35S promoter and gene VI overlap in the viral genome, or to put it another way the same bit of sequence has multiple functions (this is common in viruses, which tend to make very efficient use of their genetic material).The sequence in question is at about 10 o'clock in this circular genome map:

1) Because a virus put it there. I'm no expert on the matter, but from my knowledge genetic engineering is usually done by isolating a desirable gene, replicating it in bacteria (or virus), then having a virus with the gene insert it into the target cell. Which then develops to a full blown organism with the new gene, hopefully. Of course, it's possible that the virus could have put other junk in there. I would like to point out that detecting viral DNA in any organism is by itself no

* 3(a). Was it because of incompetence, or was it because the American scientists were not allowed to publish their finding, if they had found it before the Europeans?

Here's another question you can add:
* 4. Why the fuck don't we test GMO crops for 20+ years before we start feeding them to people, and esp. children?

The answer to this and all your other questions is "we're morons, but profit is king". I'm all for science, and I realize genetcially modifying foods is what humans have always done, but never at this speed until recently. Personally I don't take drugs that haven't been on the market for at least two decades... I'd like to be able to take the same stance

WTF are you about? GM crops are not going to help 'feed the world'. Places that are having food shortages suffer from poor soil, lack of water, poor infrastructure and little money. GM crops don't answer any of those issues.

Kool Aid, especially in large quantities, is harmful to higher cognitive functions.

Not so fast my friend. Are you aware that there has been a consistent and dedicated effort by scientists to breed/evolve rice for the last 50 years to increase production and the number of areas it can grow? And that without this effort rice production would not have kept up with worldwide demand?

GM crops can certainly play a part in continuing to keep up with demand.

WTF are you about? GM crops are not going to help 'feed the world'. Places that are having food shortages suffer from poor soil, lack of water, poor infrastructure and little money. GM crops don't answer any of those issues.

Seems to me that engineering a plant that needs minimal care and performs well under harsh conditions would be a perfectly sensible way to proceed. It is, after all, a strategy that the geek has applauded under other circumstances --- deep space exploration, the colonization of Mars and so on.

In the 1990's, the Hawaiian papaya industry was crashing. Papaya ringspot virus was kicking ass. If you got it, you were pretty much screwed. you options were grow something else or kill off the infected plants and everything around them and pray for the best. Then along came the Rainbow papaya. It was genetically engineered to resist the virus, and it did just that. The industry was able to recover. Now, that's just a fruit for the market in developed countries, but what if that were a virus of cass

There are more than enough foods produced world wide to feed everybody. There is no effective way to gather the excess of one region and distribute it to those in need in another region.

Further, the monoculture approach that is used with GM crops damages good farm land. Monsanto's fix for that, involving the increased use of petroleum based pesticides and fertilizers, completes the destruction of the damaged soils. As a farmer once told me almost 50 years ago, "All they use the dirt for is to hold the stalks up." Things have gotten worse since his day.

It seems to me that Monsanto crops are designed to sell more Monsanto chemicals

Monsanto sells four types of GE crop: Bt crops, Round-Up Ready crops, virus resistant crops (well, crop, only squash has this trait), and drought tolerant crops. Two of those four have nothing to do with chemical inputs, one reduces the need for insecticides, and the active ingredient of Round-Up is no longer patented so you can buy it from anyone.

For many years GMO researchers showed great results with new crops that had better qualities. But steadily those programs have disappeared

You're right that there are a lot of very promising GE plant out there that we don't use, but that isn't Monsanto's doing. The problem is that the regulatory bu

It's beyond that - a significant fraction of your DNA is fragments of virii. And a recombinant virus is the most common way of introducing new DNA for gene therapy.

And further, this article is idiotic. The Caulilflower mosaic viral promoter is the most common mechanism for inserting genes into GMO, so of COURSE it's going to be present, that's common knowledge to anyone in the field. Now whether it's healthy or not is a different issue..

While you'd have held my interest if your argument was, "In nature's humble opine, there are too many great hominoid's for the balance of present resources and ecosystems." , the convenient renouncing of a former cheerleader falls south of the too-good-to-be-true bar. Npsqiz tbzt, 'if there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.'

The danger with GMO crops is what we don't know about gene splicing and the like. This is a prime example of my point. Despite all their supposed safe guards, genes with unknown potential have entered the food chain. This might be the next BSE in the food supply.

This is true of many things in life. It reminds me of a line from a Wendell Berry work which stuck with me, albeit not verbatim. It was something along the lines of, 'Wisdom is knowing what to do in state of ignorance.' His point was the technical knowledge we've accumulated can sometimes blind us to the possible consequences of our overwhelming ignorance in a complex universe, even as the same knowledge gives us ever greater ability to make those consequences worse.

Even if such a thought doesn't stop someone from acting, if it gives them pause long enough to find a way to act more prudently, I think it good.

This would be useful advice for the scientists who control the delivery of GMO seed to farmers and agribusinessmen.

Oh wait... the scientists don't do that. It is the bean counters and paper shufflers who make those contracts....

GMO needs to be tightly regulated because there are too many levels where decisions are made by persons who don't have a fucking clue what their own long term best interests are. Let alone give a damn about what is best for anyone else.

Contamination of a organisms genetics with pieces of virus DNA happens in nature ALL THE TIME. It is only because this is a GMO crop that it was tested, and found.

When the testing is finished, this may well be found to be a bit of perfectly natural, happened in the field, no-scientists-required genetic mangling.

The only difference with GM is it is done in a carefully controlled manner with a known goal, and carefully tested to determine any unwanted side effects. Random, uncontrolled genetic modification, whose consequences are totally unknowable, is completely natural.

As it is, one of the later posters linked to an article that actually looked at the research paper in question. It searched the known genomes for known toxic genomes, and found nothing. It found one possible thing that might be allergenic, looked at it further and ruled it out as well.

In the end, they found a possible cause for a GMO to be less effective - stunted growth, late flowering - and concluded that this is something that geneticists should look out for.

To finish, we have yet another study that shows how GM is completely safe. And how the media is totally untrustworthy when it comes to providing information. OH, and the article makes my point about natural virus proteins, too.

Except, NO, it wasn't accidentally introduced, and anyone who is interested could have easily known this - it's even in the Wikipedia article for CMV [wikipedia.org]!

The promoter of the 35S RNA is a very strong constitutive promoter responsible for the transcription of the whole CaMV genome. It is well known for its use in plant transformation. It causes high levels of gene expression in dicot plants. However, it is less effective in monocots, especially in cereals. The differences in behavior are probably due to differences in quality and/or quantity of regulatory factors. The promoter was named CaMV 35S promoter ("35S promoter") because the coefficient of sedimentation of the viral transcript, whose expression is naturally driven by this promoter, is 35S. It is one of the most widely used, general-purpose constitutive promoters. It was discovered at the beginning of the 1980s, by Chua and collaborators at the Rockefeller University.

This study basically just "discovered" something that has already been the basis of much of the research and industry around gene insertion in plants for 30 years. Wow.

The danger with GMO crops is what we don't know about gene splicing and the like. This is a prime example of my point. Despite all their supposed safe guards, genes with unknown potential have entered the food chain. This might be the next BSE in the food supply.

Not been paying too much attention have you? The GMO has _fragments_ of this virus, the purpose of which has been repeated over and over in this thread. It's also been pointed out a few times that the _entire_ virus is often found in non-GMO crops.

There has been an increase in the last couple decades of gastrointestinal cancers affecting younger people. So, maybe. The cause(s) of this increase in GI cancer, among the young, has not been found yet.

I'm not a biologist, but digesting the cauliflower should result in breaking the proteins in simple aminoacids. So I guess we should be safe unless:
a. the gene drives the cauliflower in producing toxins - does it?
b. you inspire or inject in you bloodstream bits of cauliflower (or have rough unprotected sex with the cauliflower, so bits of it will get into you bloodstream through the ensuing friction rashes) and trigger an allergic reaction

My first thought is to ask whether it's a product of the genetic modifications, or if all plants have some of it. Is the cauliflower mosaic virus used in genetic modification?

If there is indeed unexpected, and potentially dangerous, DNA introduced during the genetic modification process, that's definitely a factor to consider in regulation. But if it's just something you'll find in any (ahem) garden-variety tomato, then it's merely an interesting tidbit of evolution.

So yes, cauliflower mosaic virus with "a full length, terminally redundant 35S RNA" exists in normal cauliflower, too. Maybe TFA has some answers but TFS fails for not answering your question, which is the first thing any of us should be asking.

1) Yes: Multiple variants of the Cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter (P35S) are used to drive the expression of transgenes in genetically modified plants

2) No its presence was not unexpected

3) Its merely a tidbit of speculation:"putative translation products of gene VI overlapping P35S" were examined. (These have never been observed in the wild, they simply "Supposed them into being".) Upon Examining them they found "No relevant similarity was identified between the putative peptides and known allergens and toxins".

Translation, These genes have sequences that might overlap to produce other "translations" (re-combinations).Nobody's ever seen it happen. So we had to use a computer.We speculated all the possible outcomes from such translations.We found nothing harmful.

Humans are not cats, but there is an analog. The abstract is "diet is more complex then b12 and the food pyramid" its not something you can easily explain. I like Pottenger's Cat study because it shows that there is an effect, that is not obvious that someone, discovered as far as the cats+food goes. I think it has a lesser analog to human diet. My next paragraph will explain some.

There is allot of further research that raw food is healthy, much better then Pottenger's cat study. People with access to varie

90 yr old Eskimo women, yet they die at 40 from heart disease in suburbia

That's not true. The life expectancy of obese, unhealthy, diabetic suburbanites is higher than Eskimos by around 10 years.

Don't get me wrong, packaged and processed foods are objectively lower in nutritional value than fruits and vegetables. And there are certainly compounds found in raw foods that are not found in cooked foods. But the opposite is also true. Humans have been cooking food for at least 100,000 years - at this point it is part of our DNA.

The issue here is not whether all genetic modification is safe, it is about the misleading reporting of a scientific article. The scientific community do have ethical concerns about safety, which is why such studies are performed in the first place.

In this particular instance, they were screening for toxins that could be produced in error by a sequence. In the particular gene they were looking at (one commonly used to promote expression of proteins for another inserted gene), they couldn't find any. This do

Fact: Humans invented greed, poverty, and in-balance of power, in nature, and in their culture.

From your list, this is the only one I think is wrong.

When your on the top of the pile, everyone else seems nice because they're trying to suck up to you. Humans are on top of the animal kingdom, and this is a primary reason other animals seem nice when interacting with humans. Watch how they treat the less powerful among themselves and it is every bit as unpleasant as the behavior of men. Both greed and cruelty are pervasive among animals also.

Thanks, that was a pretty different enlightening perspective. I suppose I see the behavior of ants as just straight forward compared to the dubious and duplicitous behavior of nations, and organized groups of humans vs each-other.

And I never once thought nature was a kind mistress, I know exactly how brutal it can be. But I prefer direct honest confrontation, flesh and blood to mental and political battles, so I colored humans badly and not animals.

Uma Thurman does. She also looks like a creepy skeleton in my opinion.

Its incredibly hard to eat raw meat safely in an industrialized society. But raw meat is digestible and perfectly safe. Fresh killed poultry that is free roaming and well taken care of, is more or less safe. We at some time in the 1900's have started overcooking foods and running pig slaughter mills that have infested our food chain with crap.

Also there's fermented fish that is un-cooked that has been left to rot, its a rare cuisine.

And uncooked, fruits and vegetables are generally healthier. Hence people who juice to get more nutrition from them, rather then boiling them and canning them.

I will not argue that we cant feed more people with canned, processed, and cheaply produced food. Thats a pro of the way we do it now. But it does not necessarily provide an increase in an individuals quality of life.

All juicing does is strip the vegetables of their fiber and ensure that you get an even larger dose of whatever industrial chemicals have been used to grow those vegetables. If you have a good nose, you can just smell the resulting juice.

Contrary to popular opinion in some circles, we are not cows. Tryign to pretend that we are cows is counterproductive. A man's gotta know his limitations. That also includes acknowledging the fact that he's missing some rather significant enzymes.

Try and explain the missing enzymes there to the first 100 results on google, its not a fad. Its scientific fact that humans can eat raw-anything.

My personal favorite is salmon and if I could eat copious amounts of that on a daily basis cheaply I would cream my pants and love life. (a little over dramatic, but you get the abstract point I hope).

Hehe, You know I agree with what you just illustrated there. That doesn't mean that hating Monsanto and disliking GMO and calling it unsafe is irrational or stupid. There's many that would argue that hate is a completely unreasoning and irrational attitude. But the general FUD and propganda I have heard about Monsanto is negative. I also know that given a choice I would pick, NOT THEM. But it seems like more and more our society is not about free will and self determination. Just do whats good for the horde

People should be free to be irrationally fearful. It is Monsanto's job to convince them not to be. But buying government regs in its favor, while effective in keeping a low profile, will do nothing to assuage that fear but rather, will exacerbate it.

And who knows -- it may turn out to be justified fear. Most grade school teachers don't pour out mercury and let the kids play with it these days (as I recall being allowed to do). Our idea about what is safe changes over time and sometimes with good reason.

I'm not a tinfoil hat type who won't touch GMO because of any silly number of silly new age concerns or paranoid fantasies. But, that doesn't mean people don't have aright to know what they eat. Sure labeling won't solve problems like in TFA, but anything additional that informs consumers is a good thing. And knowing the potential pitfalls of different food choices should be a right. The current inability of shoppers in the US to know what foods are GMO means consumers have no choice. It also leads to suspicion and support to the luddite part of the anti-GMO crowd.

Labeling is the first step to educating the public on GMOs and what they provides as well as potential impacts worldwide from GMO such as increased yield (with less chemicals) on one hand, and things like genetic diversity concerns and the role of seed/pesticide suppliers and patents on the other. The reason labeling here is so opposed by the industry isn't because of some conspiracy or concern that customers will decide to stop eating their product, or radically change their diet. Americans have known what we eat and its volume are deadly and McDonalds hasn't been shut down.

Instead the reason behind non-labeling is to keep the status quo, labels on food mean questions, questions lead to competing information and the rise of the conspiracy theorist. Not having to label is just the path of least resistance. But keeping a few loud mouth idiots quiet isn't a good reason to not engage honestly with the public about a very profound change in the way we produce food, and quality to support a growing population.

The next obvious step is to label ALL food with the exact sequence of the plant/animal. Educated consumers will then easily be able to determine the safety and even the flavorfulness of their food. Don't like that pesky CMV promoter? Don't eat it.
This is a much superior proposal to the worthless "GMO" label, that only tells you if some scientist did something (no telling what). And, you'll find out what all of those changes inserted with "natural" techniques involve -- most of which are far more "interest

I want all trace elements in my tinfoil hat to be labeled. Particularly radio actives if the tinfoil was produced and or mined in china. Oh yeah radiation in low doses is not necessarily harmful. Maybe I should buy more of those. Let the biggest corporation convince me with their well funded research! HO!

Cauliflower mosaic virus infects various different plants that you eat (yes, even non-gmo "organically grown" ones) including turnips.

You already get fully formed protein VI in any of them you eat that were infected. So, this isn't something new. We've been eating the protein they're upset about for millenia at least.

The sequence for protein VI overlaps part of this 35S promoter that's used in some genetics work. It's not normally expressed (changed from DNA into the active protein) and in fact they couldn't find any evidence that it ever was.

So, they asked the question "what if" this thing we never see happen did by some miracle happen. And when they did, they still couldn't find anything that looked dangerous. But, being scientists, they said they couldn't absolutely, completely, absitively and posolutely rule out any effects on the plants themselves.

So, there you have it. The thing we never see happen, even if it did happen is the same as something that already happens all the time for the past millenia with no known ill effects.